This is the third generation of this page. The first generation was updates on my roleplays and how my life would affect my replies. That was back when I still had the ability to push past my health issues and juggle eight different balls in the air. For the time being, I have the ability to focus on my career and occasionally take care of myself, so I'm limiting myself to that. Therefore, that generation isn't too useful to me.
The second generation was me venting more personally. There are two reasons I'm moving away from that iteration - firstly who gives a fuck? I'm not the type to scream in the void and find it therapeutic, and that's essentially what I was doing. Therapy is for that, and I'm still on the fence about real therapy, let alone some terrible self-medicated version. The second is that I didn't think it was too interesting. There's a phenomenon in college freshman writing, where when you ask them to write personal narrative, you end up getting a contest about the worst sob stories they've experienced. Part of it is because it's the first time they've ever had the chance to let the story out, and part of it is because when you start out writing, you think drama is entangled in momentous events. It's why romance writers are the worst writers (I'm kidding! Mostly!) There's nothing more tragic than mundanity, most of the time.
So third generation here we are. While I sit here sipping 124 proof brandy grappling with my recurring insomnia, I think I'd like to use this version to talk about what I work on. For those of you invested in my own little meltdown of a life to read this, you may or may not know I'm a writer. I'm like Xanaphia, but I mostly write nonfiction short stories. It's kind of like what Xana does, but instead of writer's block, I get the looming threat of emotional breakdown from the thought of constantly confronting my trauma and putting it into a context anyone would ever care about. I believe it was Elissa Washuta who essentially said that nonfiction writing is like a bad form of therapy - all of the emotional confrontation, none of the personal growth.
So what am I working on right now? Essentially a piece about the younger generation in America. 18-29 year olds ish. Young people old enough to remember Obama during his campaign, essentially? Did you know there were three major spikes in youth voter turnout in this country? When the 26th amendment passed, of course, which allowed 18 year olds to vote. The second spike was when Ross Perot ran in '92. I argue that instead of electing a man whose principle campaign promise was to secure the future of the youth of America, older voters turned out en masse to elect a man who would go on to rape an employee and weaken the financial regulations that could have helped to prevent 2008. If you're as weird as me, I highly recommend watching a Perot rally. It's this fascinating blend of the positives of Donald Trump's speaking and the youth-focused message of Bernie Sanders, all in a near-comical Texas accent. What a fascinating man. The third spike was in 2008, when Obama won. There's a Maria Bustillos quote I'm using to illustrate the same feeling of betrayal with Obama's ascent, it's from the last interview with Anthony Bourdain. "No!! No. He lied. I worked hard for that campaign. I saw and I just believed him and I was like Hope, Change, Yes. I’m like, I’m so happy, we won, you know! Minute one he started fucking with us. He promised transparency, he like—more whistleblowers were prosecuted than at any time. There’s not one fucking banker in jail. Not one! Jail me one fuckin’ banker! These people stole nine million houses!”
This is the kind of stuff I would tell to my significant other, in the middle of the morning with far too much enthusiasm while talking far too fast. I think I miss having that outlet to vent about my weird interests. I don't expect anyone to find ANY of this interesting - even my close diehard friends zonk out when I start talking about the Glass-Steagall Act - but it's nice to have a place to just dump my excitement. I haven't been doing an amazing job of selling nonfiction writing I know - but when you find that thing that hits you where you live, man there's nothing in the world that you wanna obsess over more. I've never understood people who watch The Office for the eighth millionth time, or get obsessed with True Crime or so on, because I think this is my version of that. I tend to think it's cooler and more unique than those other things; partly because it changes all the time to something wholly new and partly because I'm a pretentious dickhead.
If you read any of this, congrats? As with all my stuff, feel free to comment, interact, call me a friendless harpy, so on. One day, I'll write a solo roleplay on this site again, and it will blow people's minds away that I'm back. That had nothing to do with anything, but hey my brain is very not functional, I get a pass. I'll be back to update this when I'm back to update this. Cheers.
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